Full night never fully descends in June upon Canada’s Far North Yukon Territory. I set off alone to canoe from Quiet Lake near Whitehorse, down the Little Salmon River to the Big Salmon, and then on to the mighty Yukon that flows across Alaska to the sea. In former lives I might have been a Swahili warrior in Africa, a Bedouin on the Sahara, an Eskimo in the Arctic, a Cheyenne brave on the Great Plains… I have traveled by dogsled, horse, ox cart, boat, donkey, camel, on foot, or on bicycle into some of the most remote deserts, mountains, seas, and forests on the planet.

I never feel alone. The Wild Kingdom is well populated.

From Quiet Lake, I plummeted down white water rapids in a narrows on the Little Salmon and surprised a cow moose with her head lowered to drink. I passed almost underneath her nose. I could have touched her with my paddle. Calmly, she watched me, her head following my progress until I rounded the bend out of sight.

A large black boar bear was harvesting grubs from beneath a decayed log on the river bank. I nosed my canoe ashore not ten feet away.

“Br’r Bear, do you mind if I take your picture?”

He didn’t. I think he smiled for his portrait, but I couldn’t be sure.

Young bears are curious animals. Whenever I pitched my tent to sleep, they came to pay their respects. Finally, in order to sleep at all, I repaid their curiosity by shouting and throwing rocks at them to drive them away.

During one of my hikes off the river to explore, I met a porcupine on a narrow game trail. They are near-sighted creatures. I froze motionless until he was only a couple of feet away.

“Boo!”

He sprang straight into the air and, with surprising speed and agility, scaled a tree and peered down from a limb to locate the source of his discomfiture. I laughed and moved on.

The Yukon is a mighty river hugged by evergreen forests and snow-capped mountains. On one of the islands I startled a cow moose and her newborn. Mom growled a warning and I politely backed off.

During a sudden storm, I found myself trapped on a one-acre island with a grizzly. The griz took one end of the island, I took the other, and in this manner we rode out the tempest together.

A few afternoons later with the sun bobbing low and red above the western horizon, I pitched camp on a small sandy island overshadowed on the shore by a towering precipice. Suddenly, a pack of timber wolves silhouetted against the late sun began serenading me from the top of the precipice.

I relaxed and stretched out on my back next to the fire to enjoy a concert orchestrated by God’s creatures. Life is always good in the wilds.

Charles W. Sasser is author of more than 60 books and thousands of magazine articles in national magazines. He has traveled to every continent on earth except Anarctica.

Human nature may at times be baffling, cruel, and often humorous. As a street cop, later a homicide detective, I never ceased to be amazed and amused.

For a period of time, I held down a position off-duty as a store detective apprehending shoplifters for the IGA supermarket chain. Thieves, not being the brightest ware on the silverware aisle, were surprisingly easy to spot.

The too-casual sort ambled up and down the floor squeezing the produce. A few cheap items made it to their carts, expensive selections vanished into their clothing. Then, even more casually, they would park the cart near the front of the store while they attempted to disappear into the parking lot. And would have, except for me.

Runners were considerably more obvious. Usually young males, they knew exactly what they wanted to steal when they walked in. They headed directly for their target, snatched it and sprinted for the door, depending on speed and agility to escape.

Except I was a long-distance competition runner. I chased one 19-year-old suspect for a mile, gaining on him while he kept looking back over his shoulder in consternation. As soon as I was near enough, I booted him square in the butt. By the time he got back up he was wearing handcuffs.

Professionals come prepared. A woman wearing a voluminous skirt and a long blouse gained about thirty pounds during her shopping spree stuffing items into oversized bloomers underneath her skirt. I put her on Weight Watchers.

A man with baggy Levis lost his dignity when the extra weight of merchandise concealed in his jeans dropped his drawers to his knees just as he reached the door. The next thing he heard was me laughing and saying, “Bud, you’re under arrest.”

Impulsive shoplifters are often befuddled, bemused, and penitent. I watched a fat woman stuff a gallon of ice cream up her skirt and between her thighs, then waddle out of the store into hot July sunshine. With me only a step behind.

Naturally, she denied the theft. And I couldn’t body search a female. So, I employed polite conversation for the next quarter-hour until chocolate pecan evidence began melting and running down her legs to puddle on the sidewalk.

If a person is legitimately down-and-out and hungry, I have sometimes bought him something to eat. But if he or she is merely too worthless, lazy, or doped-up to work, or had simply rather steal, then, melted ice cream or not, it’s off to the barred-window hotel. With me often chuckling all the way.

SIX: END GAME, by Charles W. Sasser (fiction, Adaptation of History Channel’s popular Navy SEAL action-adventure miniseries. Book II)

NIGHT FIGHTER, by Navy Captain Bill Hamilton and Charles W. Sasser (nonfiction. True story of the founder of Navy SEAL Team Six, and his long career as fighter pilot, CIA agent, UDT diver, spy, and advisor to President Ronald Reagan)

The Secret Service assembled federal, state, and local police in a secure room at the Tulsa Airport to brief us on the current threat posture against the President of the United States, who was on a reelection campaign and would arrive shortly on Air Force One. American cities in the 1960s and ‘70s had become targets of violence led by college revolutionaries and socialist radicals such as SDS and SNCC. Protestors today in Tulsa were expected to do whatever they had to do in order to attract media attention for their “cause.”

Tulsa Police plainclothes TAC/SWAT teams, of which I was a member, were assigned to infiltrate the crowd in the airport hangar, keep our eyes peeled for possible assassins or other troublemakers, and isolate them quietly and quickly from the press and from creating further disturbances.

Air Force One arrived. President Nixon took the stage. Agitators seeded throughout the crowd began shouting him down, making threatening gestures, and, in general, being loud and nasty. The Press loved it.

Working in two-man teams, TAC officers distributed ourselves inside the crowd and targeted the most obnoxious and menacing of the offenders. Few noticed in the uproar when pairs of undercover officers cornered a reprobate and hustled him to the rear where we stored him in an “our-of-order” restroom guarded by a six-foot-seven TAC officer we called “The Giant.” Captives weren’t apt to escape past him.

It didn’t take long for us to fill up the toilet. The Giant complained of the increased stench.

Soon, a reporter discovered the reason why the multitudes had grown noticeably better behaved and less raucous. A large gaggle of reporters and news jocks gathered at the toilet, their excitement palpable in anticipation of action footage of cops wrestling protesting resisters to the paddy wagon. Nothing increased ratings faster than dope-smoking hippies yelling and screaming at the cops and getting beat up by them.

“This is going to be great!” one reporter exhorted.

We cops grinned at each other. We weren’t about to provide them a show. Neither were we going to accommodate the commode dwellers by providing them an audience on the 6 O’Clock Report.

We withdrew after President Nixon left the hangar and the crowd dispersed. Soon, the only mob remaining was the hoi polloi waiting for the action to begin at the toilet. News chasers scratched their heads in puzzlement, looked at each other, and shrugged. They scratched their noses, licked their lips, and stared at the unguarded door.

TAC officers watching from a distance snickered to ourselves. The toilet door finally cracked and a shaggy head cautiously emerged. The man stepped out into the hangar, followed by others one by one. They looked around, frowned, scratched themselves—and nothing happened.

No news here. The reporters shrugged some more and walked off in disappointment.

At last, when the hangar was all but abandoned, those who intended to be the stars of the 6 O’Clock feeding frenzy on TV slunk off too and disappeared into anonymity.

Watch this site for SQUIRRELS, NUTS AND LOONIES, by Charles W. Sasser, to be published soon.

U.S. Army Special Forces Team ODA-213 was together again, not counting those who had died. The team rallied on Memorial Day, eight of the twelve that made up an SF Green Beret team. Hair had turned gray; the eight of us probably weighed twice as much collectively as the twelve had when we were parachuting out of airplanes and inserting onto LZs by chopper.

Brothers. Closer than brothers, bonded by hardship, danger, and adventures that spanned the globe.

We were now the Geriatric Green Beret team. And we had our stories to tell. Hundreds of them.

Mad Dog. In a bar outside Fort Bragg, Mad Dog stood up and, “I’ll buy you a drink!” while over half of ODA-213 and a team from the 7th Group slipped out the back door to avoid confronting the biggest, meanest-looking female in North Carolina;

The Rock. The only soldier in Special Forces to cause a four-car pileup on a Texas freeway by wagging his serrated tongue at a carload of girls;

P.D.C. Got the moniker from an old movie that began with, “I was born a poor black child.” One look at the kid with ears and “I was born a Poor Dumb Child” stuck;

The Old Man. Team Sergeant, wounded in Vietnam, leader of the “Anthropological Tour” on pass. The “Animal Tour” hung out at strip joints and cheap bars;

L.T. Team leader, revolted to be served “poodles and noodles” (dog) at a dinner hosted for us by the Mayor of Inchon, Korea;

Tommy Hands. Doctors put his foot together crooked after he broke his leg during a parachute jump in Korea. Had to be re-broken and re-cast. The team helpfully provided photos of our booted feet so the Docs could see what feet ought to look like;

Young John. Airsick during a “barf jump” caused by a long NOE (nap of earth) flight, he slipped on vomit going out the door and went out upside down;

Bovine. The tidy one. ‘You’ll get us all sticky!”

Tall T. Kept hitting his helmet on top of aircraft;

Uncle Pablo. Once gave me his niece to marry.

After a Central American op, we returned smelling so foul the brass burned our uniforms;

During a desert training session, we put up signs at base camp to keep score. Rattlesnakes, 5; SF, 12;

Snow was so deep during cold weather training we stuck in it up to our web gear when we parachuted into it;

An Asian pilot dumped the team into a frozen river in the middle of the night. To prevent freezing to death, the team wrapped up in parachutes and burrowed into a silo full of chicken manure…

Brothers. Closer than brothers. Always.

Last season the History Channel aired the miniseries SIX, based on SEAL team missions. SIX: BLOOD BROTHERS and SIX: END GAME by Charles W. Sasser is the two-volume novelization of the miniseries, now available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and most book stores. It is now a continuing series on History Channel.

A rusted barbed wire fence defined the border between Texas and Mexico. A Border Patrol officer told me that invaders swarmed over the fence into the United States like cockroaches as soon as the sun went down.

According to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, an uncounted number of foreign-born estimated as high as 38 million reside here illegally. Another 58.3 million have been granted asylum or legal status. That means more than 30 percent of the population inside the U.S. is not native born.

As a historian, I trekked our southern border, talking to ranchers, farmers, immigrants, as well as Border Patrol officials, and others to discover for myself the extent of illegals entering our country and their effect on American culture. A nation that does not protect its borders, I reflected while standing at the rusted barbed wire fence, is soon not a nation. Historically, “barbarians at the gate” have been a major factor in the decline of civilizations.

“During the collapse of Western Civilization the first time,” historian Victor Davis Hanson points out, “the Roman Empire could not or would not define their borders. . .So when people started coming from Northern Europe, (the Romans) thought. . . ‘We’re much more sophisticated that we will assimilate them quickly. . .’ ‘They’re coming because they want to be like us.’”

Wrong.

Out of naiveté, political correctness, ignorance, or perhaps some darker motive, American leaders and the political Progressive Left continue to welcome illegals with open arms at our borders, many of whom refuse to be assimilated. It is not uncommon to watch illegal immigrants on TV protesting, in foreign languages, for their “rights.”

A poll conducted by the Center for Immigration Studies found that over half of all immigration households—both illegal and legal—use at least one welfare program. Seventy five percent prefer bigger government with more services.

In addition, the Center for Security Policy reveals that 51 percent of U.S. Muslims seek sharia law over the U.S. Constitution. One in four believes “it is legitimate to use violence to punish those who give offense to Islam. Only 39 percent believe they should be subject to American courts. Sufi leader Sheikh Mahammad Kabbani testified before the U.S. State Department that Islam extremist ideology has taken over 80 percent of mosques in the U.S.

“The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet if Islam,” declared Barack Obama when he was President and appeared before the United Nations.

You’ll be shot or beheaded if you do.

The 2016 DNC platform argued that U.S. borders are not open wide enough to ensure equal treatment for “all Americans—(Now get this)—regardless of immigration status.”

Today, the “melting pot” has become the dumping grounds. As with Rome’s barbarians, the “huddled masses” from the Third World are inside the gates of the world’s last chance for freedom—and are overwhelming and changing it.

Should I need a disclaimer against being a “racist,” be it known that I spent much of the 1980s in Latin America. I speak Spanish, I had a girlfriend in Honduras, and considered adopting two little children from Nicaragua fleeing from the communist Sandinistas and were in a UN refugee camp. In addition, I have traveled and lived with people in Europe, Asia, Africa, and other places.